Fun Finds: Photo Screen Magazine, October 1978

Why, yes, I did just recently present a Fun Find that was an issue of Photo Screen Magazine, but that one was from 1973. This one was purchased the same day, so it's been in a holding pattern until I did a couple of other posts so that we could avoid being too, too repetitious in The Underworld. The cover of this one screams out about the "marriage" between John Travolta and Connie Stevens (!) and couldn't be any more far-fetched if it were on the cover of Starlog or Fangoria magazines instead! Less lunatic headlines refer to the real marital troubles of Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors as well as the honeymoon of Donny Osmond and his wife. You may need to open a new tab or window in order to read the text of these scans.

The "TV and Movie Scoops" section has an eye-catching photo of Cher and her baby boy (by temporary husband Greg Allman) Elijah Blue. Blurbs include one about the supposed stability of Cheryl Tiegs' marriage to ad-exec Stan Dragoti. They divorced the very next year after about a decade of marriage! Tiegs was married and divorced three more times after this. There's also info on Lee and Farrah spending time together, Scott Baio admitting to a temper, Ricardo Montalban enjoying his TV success, Dean Martin guest-starring on Charlie's Angels and Henry "The Fonz" Winkler returning from his honeymoon. (I'm happy to report that they are still together after thirty-seven years!) A final item notes how Joyce DeWitt is unused to signing autographs (which is something she has since become quite familiar with at nostalgia conventions!) DeWitt, who has never married, lived with Ray Buktenica (misspelled in the column) for seven years.

The next page features the wedding of Michelle Phillips to a TV executive. They would remain wed until 1982. In 2000, Phillips wed for a fourth time in 2000 to a man she's still with today. There's a blurb about Shaun Cassidy having to cancel a concert due to poor advance sales, one about Natalie Wood quitting smoking by an unusual method, former child actor Shelley Fabares remarking on playing a mother now (in a TV-movie that also starred Mickey Rooney) and Janet Louise Johnson on portraying Nancy Drew after Pamela Sue Martin vacated the role. Johnson acted until the mid-1990s, but eventually married, had three kids and now works as a child care instructor. Other bits include Angie Dickinson's relief that the grind of Police Woman is over, Greg Mullavey and then-wife Meredith MacRae eating at McDonald's (their union ended in 1987), the burgeoning career of Andrew Stevens and Robert Urich wanting to adopt a baby with his wife Heather Menzies. They wound up adopting three and were happy together until his untimely death in 2002. Photos include one of Telly Savalas with his son and a fun shot of Vic Tayback and Polly Holliday of Alice.

I had to include this little sliver of a remainder of the Hollywood Scoop section because it includes a photo of the delicious Dack Rambo. Kevin Brophy did indeed propose to and marry Amy Prettyman. What's more interesting is that Brophy later costarred with Peter Barton in 1981's Hell Night and, in 2013, a man neither actor had ever met left the two favorite stars over $1 million to split! Meanwhile, the man had been living in squalor with no plumbing. There's also a blurb about Kiss rocker Gene Simmons surprising then-girlfriend Cher with a party. The other photo is of Happy Days' Tom Bosley and refers to him as "happily married" though his wife actually died in April of 1978, months before this issue was written! In 1980, he remarried and was wed for thirty years to that wife until his death in 2010.

Next up is the lavish wedding of Princess Caroline of Monaco to Parisian banker Philippe Junot. A photo shows Cary Grant, Caroline's mother's friend and movie costar when she was known as Grace Kelly and not Princess Grace. Grace, by the way, seems to have worn the equivalent of a floral Mohawk to one of the events, judging by the photo!

Bursting onto the pages of the magazine at apparently the eleventh hour is an announcement about the killing of Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane. He died in mid-July of 1978, so that's about when this "October" issue was being prepared. One can see the sketchiness of the details of the crime in this early account and, in fact, the case was cold for a dozen years until it was reopened in 1990, followed by a 1994 trial involving one of Crane's disgruntled friends. The man was found not guilty amid inconclusive evidence and reasonable doubt.

This next article focuses on Elliott Gould, who, after having divorced second wife - and mother of two of his children - Jenny Bogart in 1975, remarried her in 1978! They divorced a second time in 1979 (and Gould, who had previously been wed to Barbra Streisand from 1963 to 1971, has not remarried anyone since.)

This next page reflects upon behind-the-scenes squabbles during Heaven Can Wait (1978), in particular between Warren Beatty and his female costars Dyan Cannon and Julie Christie. Beatty's exasperating attention to detail and obsessiveness are also mentioned with regard to the film's editing and poster art. On the same page, the move to shake some of the 1950s aura off of Grease (1978) and imbue it with some modern touches are discussed.

Here we come to the Fawcett-Majors marital problems, though this is prior to the big one which resulted in a splashy divorce in 1982. Here, the other man she's supposedly fallen for is her Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978) costar Jeff Bridges! Bridges was a newlywed at the time to a wife he remains with to this day (and who was with him on location.) The baby referred to was nothing more than a future baby (which never came) that Majors wanted to be raised by a mom and not nannies and so forth.

The movie Somebody Killed Her Husband (which some critics re-dubbed "Somebody Killed her Career!") was Fawcett's first movie after breaking her Charlie's Angels contract after one season, but it was not the movie she'd had in mind when she did that. She was initially to star in Foul Play (1978) opposite Chevy Chase, but when legal entanglements over Angels prohibited her from doing that one, Goldie Hawn was cast. Chase later costarred with Fawcett in the middling comedy Man of the House (1995), playing a potential stepfather to her son Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

The cover story is so preposterous as to make one's eyes bug out. John Travolta and Connie Stevens happened to be standing near one another (perhaps!) at a party and somehow a huge fabrication was created out of that. The article goes on and on about Travolta's mature girlfriend Diana Hyland, who died of cancer in his arms, and about his slate of films before suggesting, out of the blue, that Connie Stevens (sixteen years his senior) would make the perfect match for him!

She is even quoted in the article as saying that she's in a relationship with someone who's name she won't divulge and the author of the article acts like it's Travolta, though there is nothing to suggest that except his or her own fertile imagination. The baby allegedly arriving in the magazine's headline is nothing but Stevens' (already a mother of two) desire to have one more (though she was forty at this time) as well as Travolta's wish to have a few kids.  The whole story is poppycock and certainly not the advertised "Scoop of the Year!"

This next two-page spread offers up quotes from the stars along with photos of the person being quoted. John Wayne, whose life would be taken by stomach cancer within a year, expresses his "greed" at wanting more time while Cheryl Tiegs announces how nice she is. (We might ask one of those four ex-husbands what they think! Ha!)

The following page weighs in with Michael Landon on crying (he cried in very many episodes of Little House on the Prairie), virginal Debby Boone (she married the son of Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney the year after this and they remain wed today), enthusiastic Mick Jagger and starstruck Cheryl Ladd.

Another splashy, incorrect article shines the spotlight on newlywed Donny Osmond and his bride Debbie, suggesting that they separated during their honeymoon. Osmond had pulled a fast one by announcing their engagement only one week after ever having revealed her to the public! But they'd been dating on the down low for a couple of years to avoid publicity (of this very sort!)

The article also suggests that Donny dragged his siblings Jimmy and Marie on the honeymoon, when, in fact, this photo was from filming during the movie "Aloha, Donny & Marie" (released in 1978 as Goin' Coconuts), at which Debbie was a visitor. There is also a lengthy segment about how Jake LaMotta's daughter had come forward to say that she was jilted by Osmond after his promising to marry her because she was not a Mormon like him. He claimed he'd never even heard of her before! In any case, Osmond was and is devoutly Morman and he and his wife are still married with five children and an assortment of grandchildren.

Things switch to daytime TV in this next section. It's chiefly an Emmy recap with Ryan's Hope winning for best Writing and Days of Our Lives as Best Series. Laurie Heineman, Outstanding Actress winner had left the show to focus on prime-time acting, but was mostly limited to TV-movie and series guest roles. Mary Fickett (pictured) of All My Children was the first daytime actress to receive an Emmy, which, oddly enough, she won in prime-time before the separate daytime awards were instituted the following year!

The Outstanding Actor winner, James Pritchett of The Doctors, has for years been nothing to me but a man in black and white photos, but thanks to recent re-airings of The Doctors on RetroTV (beginning with late-1967 ones and currently up to early-1969), I have become familiar with his engagingly-curmudgeonly persona. It's so sad that I have somehow become hooked on a long-defunct soap opera from when I was but an infant! Another departing daytimer was Michael Nouri, who did go on to a measure of success including Flashdance (1983.) There's a fun photo of daytime fixture Ruth Warrick visiting Rosemary Prinz (of As the World Turns) and Colby Hicks (who would later fins success as Catherine Hicks.)

This next page is kind of fun because it centers on stars from the past more than the flavors of the moment. We hear about Ann Blyth's daughter, Burt Ward's love life, the romances of Ruth Buzzi and Anne Baxter and the by-mail marriage proposals that Rita Hayworth was still getting at this late stage. Also there are bits about acting gigs for Katharine Hepburn, June Lockhart, Joan Blondell, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Sylvia Sidney. Performing on stage at the time were Leonard Nimoy, Myrna Loy, Joanne Woodward & Shirley Knight, Patrick MacNee, Red Skelton and Fred Gwynne. Then there are promotional bits regarding Paul Newman, Arlene Dahl, Charles Farrell and Doris Day along with the photo of Janet Gaynor.

This article features that famous night at the 50th Annual Oscar ceremony in which Barbara Stanwyck was taken by surprise when William Holden discarded his scripted presenter babble in favor of a tribute to his long-ago costar from Golden Boy (1939.) He was so green he was in danger of being fired, but she stepped in and demanded that he be given a chance, working with him until his performance had improved substantially. A touching postscript to this came in 1982 when Stanwyck was bestowed with an Honorary Oscar and dedicated it to her "golden boy" Holden, who had died a few months prior.

This next section has a fun title, "TattleTales." First is a blurb about Dustin Hoffman experiencing marital problems and possibly doing a movie with Kate Jackson, who he'd recently met. Hoffman and Anne did divorce in 1980 (he remarried that same year, days later, to his present wife.) The movie project was Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), which Jackson had to give up due to Charlie's Angels, paving the way for Meryl Streep to win an Oscar! Angie Dickinson and Burt Bacharach did stay married, but only until 1981. Nick Nolte's marriage to Sharon only lasted til 1983. The movie they mention was never made, though he did later costar with Susan Sarandon in Lorenzo's Oil (1992.) Other bits discuss Rock Hudson, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and the ever-present Farrah Fawcett. There's a photo of Barbara Bain and Martin Landau, rather rare, too, since this was a career dry spell for them. To the surprise of many, they divorced in 1993 after 36 years of marriage. Another couple is shown whose split caused a shock. Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker divorced in 1982 after two decades of wedded bliss.

There's a mention of Return Engagement, a 1978 TV-movie that Elizabeth Taylor did with Joseph Bottoms when she was close to her heaviest. The marriage mentioned for Jennifer O'Neill didn't even last a year and was only one of NINE marriages the actress has undergone! Other bits touch on Richard Dreyfus, Maureen Stapleton, Sally Struthers, Esther Rolle, Valerie Perrine and a TV series based on Saturday Night Fever (1977) which never materialized.We also find photos of Diana Canova with her mother Judy, an impossibly young and thin James Woods and new heartthrob Andrew Stevens on the town with Kim Darby.

In yet another, ignorant and baiting sort of article, Suzanne Somers is depicted with her husband Alan Hamel while also shown in an embrace with John Ritter as the headline screams about her married lover. Then the sub-heading describes their "open marriage."

As the article proceeds, its just a piece about her (secure) marriage and how they deal with the outside pressures of stardom, including the demands on her time and attention. The "married lover" referred to in the headline is her HUSBAND! The article even goes on to state that.  Dumb... Somers and Hamel were in a relationship close to ten years before they tied the knot and they are still together today, offering up yet one more example of a Tinseltown marriage that works, whatever it takes.

Here we have one of those old-fashioned type of publicity opportunities in which the magazine visits the star at home and sees him going about various activities. In this case it's then-hot Erik Estrada of CHiPs.

The photo-essay has him fixing food, exercising, enjoying a visit from his mother and sister and basically playing out a series of staged scenarios for the camera. My favorite caption is this one: "When his sister's around, Erik challenges her to a game of backgammon while they listen to disco records."

Talk about a sensational headline... INCEST!  LOL  This article talks about Bruce Boxleitner marrying his own sister. In fact, Kathryn Holcomb, Boxleitner's new wife, played his sister on their TV series How the West Was Won. Their union produced two children and lasted until 1987. She is actually the one who introduced Boxleitner to Melissa Gilbert who, after two false starts, became his second wife in 1995, though they divorced in 2012.

Our final section is called "Manhattan Party Line" with a look at New York City celebrity news. Liza Minnelli's Tony win and excerpt performance from The Act at the ceremony is discussed. There is also a tidbit on James Brolin and the career restrictions that Marcus Welby, M.D. put on him for several years. He also remarks upon his marriage, which lasted until 1986. After another decade married to Jan Smithers, he startled the world by marrying Barbra Streisand in 1998 and they're together still. A story and photo depict Princess Caroline with her pal model-turned-singer Madleen Kane, who was a disco recording artist for several years.

An interesting blurb about Ryan O'Neal recounts the way onlookers were making it tough to film Oliver's Story (1978) downtown, but more intriguingly how he wound up not doing The Champ (1979) because he'd intended to use his son Griffin O'Neal in the role that later shot Ricky Schroeder to fame. There's also mention of Claudette Colbert returning to Broadway after a fifteen year absence. The Kingfisher, opposite Rex Harrison, ran for about six months. Surprisingly, the only award recognition went to the sole remaining player, George Rose, who won a Drama Desk Award! Photos include David Frost, Scott Baio & Erin Moran (in almost matching get-ups) and Kate Jackson.

The last page focuses on Jack Lemmon's stage hit Tribute, Jill St. John's preferences when it comes to men and Jon Voight discussing his parental practices (one of the kids being two year-old Angelina Jolie!) He has plenty to say on the matter, though the two have gone through plenty of rough patches during her adult life. Photos feature Kristy McNichol behind the wheel of a car, Elliott Gould with his new/old wife and kids and June Allyson with her third husband (she had also married her second husband and divorced him twice!) Allyson's third and last hubby was a retired dentist who eventually turned to acting himself and toured in plays with Allyson along with a few TV gigs. They remained together for three decades until her death in 2006.

We hope you had fun thumbing through the pages of this celeb rag and we'll be back again soon with more fun.

"Blood Runs Cold," but the Hair Runs High!

Rare is the day when I follow up one movie tribute with another (they are typically quite labor intensive), but this time I couldn't help myself (and I do try to be unpredictable!) Hot on the heels of profiling The Big Cube (1969), I happened to stumble upon 1965's My Blood Runs Cold, a movie I'd wanted to see for many years and damn near missed due to not paying attention to the TV schedule! The moody romantic-thriller marked a turning point (in more than one way) in the careers of teen heartthrob Troy Donahue and for pouting minx Joey Heatherton.

Unlike most of Donahue's movies, this was shot in black and white, probably to increase the atmosphere of it ala Psycho (1960), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and others of the thriller ilk, but in truth it screams out for color, what with the seaside location and the sometimes sumptuous settings and costumes.

Directed by William Conrad, a busy radio actor who segued into film and TV roles and found success as the rotund star of Cannon (1971-1976) and Jake and the Fatman (1987-1992), the movie opens with a quote from Lord Byron. The quote provides the movie with its title and, if you're anything like me, you ALWAYS associate Lord Byron with Troy Donahue and Joey Heatherton! It's a no-brainer.

A young lady in period costume (resembling Heatherton) looks out at the sea before returning to her house along the shore. We know it's in the past because a burlap-like filter has been placed over the picture! Next we see Heatherton in contemporary gear (but with a similar scarf) zooming down the road with Nicolas Coster in the passenger seat as he implores her to slow down. They're on their way to a dedication of some sort and she says they can't be late.

She'll have none of his pleading and, when she comes upon a stopped truck on her side of the road, she swerves into the other lane where an oncoming motorcyclist (Troy Donahue) is forced to zoom off into some brush while she and Coster careen into the surf!

When Donahue lays his eyes on Heatherton, he's quite clearly stricken by her. Her name is Julie, but he calls her Barbara and says he has a picture of her to prove it. Coster thinks maybe he's a bit shaken up from the accident and Heatherton suggests getting him to the hospital.

In an all-too-brief moment, we see their friends John McCook and Linda Meiklejohn. McCook, in his big screen debut here, would later go on to a lengthy and prosperous career on soap operas such as The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. Though he is billed in the opening credits this little scene is all we see of him, sadly, and suggests that maybe another sequence or two was edited out prior to release.

(Fun fact: Cleft-chinned McCook was the husband of actress/dancer Juliet Prowse from 1972-1979 and they had a son together. The year after their divorce, he married his presetn wife Laurette Spang of Battlestar Galactica fame.)

We next see an empty set of folding chairs and the remains of what had been the grand opening of a new marina, courtesy of wealthy local figure Barry Sullivan and his sister Jeanette Nolan. Sullivan is Heatherton's father and he isn't pleased to see her tearing into the parking lot about two hours late for the dedication.

Nolan is done up in an ostrich plume hat that is as striking as it bizarre, though despite its audacious-ness is nothing more than an appetizer of what is to come from her. There is not one frame of Nolan in this movie that doesn't feature either a preposterous hairdo or a hilarious costume or sometimes both! Do not mistake me as disapproving of this, however. Jeanette Nolan's hair in this movie is nothing short of life-changing and is the kind of thing I take to and proceed to love forever!!

Nolan meets Donahue for the first time, him having been brought along by Heatherton and Coster, and is intrigued by him, especially when she hears his name. He is invited to come to their mansion for champagne as a token of their thanks for not making too much of a deal out of the smash-up with his bike.

At Sullivan's beautiful home, Heatherton has her hair piled up in a delightful 'do, but Nolan unveils her own concoction, sort of a follicle-filled, interstate clover-leaf in which she rolled it with cans of Campbell's soup and then slid them out after shellacking them to rock hardness! (She wouldn't have been out of place on Star Trek had she moseyed over to the Desilu stages in between set-ups for this movie...)

Donahue is clearly obsessed with Heatherton, though she is chilly towards him in return. Besides, she's practically promised to even-keeled Coster. Nolan is worried that Heatherton is behaving too recklessly and impulsively and hopes that she will settle down and marry someone nice (in her view, Coster.)

Heatherton is busying herself with restoring a family home called Spindrift, which is the one we saw at the start of the movie. It's been closed up for years, but she's decided to refinish the furniture and bring the accessories and decor out of storage. While there alone the next day, she turns on the radio and begins shimmying around the room (this IS Heatherton we're talking about after all!) Just then, Donahue appears and starts to spout some gobbledegook about how he and she are reincarnated lovers.

He even presents her with a locket that contains a picture which looks very much like her, only it's over a hundred years old. (I was going more for Sally Ann Howes in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang myself...) Needless to say, she is disturbed by all this and orders Donahue to leave, though in her heart she's still not exactly sure what to think!

She takes the locket to a local jeweler (Howard McNear, best known as Floyd the barber on The Andy Griffith Show, 1961-1967!) who assures her that it is indeed old and authentic.

She arrives home to find Sullivan, Nolan and Coster at dinner, dressed to the nines and wondering where she's been. He's not pleased to discover that she was up at the old house unchaperoned with Donahue (the elderly caretaker of the place has apparently gone missing.) Sullenly, she apologizes and says that she cannot eat, nor attend the concert as planned. Here we get my very favorite Nolan look as her hair is piled to the ceiling and she's sporting dazzling earrings and an encrusted evening get-up.

Nolan tells of how Heatherton's great-great grandmother was impregnated by a sailor she loved and proceeded to have his baby before dying in childbirth. The baby was then adopted by their ancestor and the family line continued on down to them. In short, their family tree was spawned from (in her words) a “bastard!” As the family historian, Nolan knows where all the bodies are buried, but this news is a bit of a shock to Sullivan and Heatherton.

Heatherton is miserable and Nolan attempts to console her and listen to her, but with Sullivan possessing such a domineering persona and Coster patiently hovering, it's difficult for her to focus on what she want to do or should do.

Sullivan takes it upon himself to visit Donahue down at the sloop where he lives on a sailboat and tells him to stay away from his daughter. He hasn't even pulled out of the parking lot when in swoops Heatherton in a nautical sun dress and with a picnic basket, determined to go for a spin with Donahue! She informs her father that she is twenty-one and will do as she pleases.

Donahue sets sail with Heatherton and tells her that beneath her seaside property is an under-ground cavern where the two of them met in their former lives and made love. She denies the existence of such a place, but he swears he'll take her there personally if she will only trust him. They don their swimsuits and dive into the ocean, swimming towards the entrance to the grotto.

I love anything that involves underwater swimming, including the lunatic jaunt shown here in which the twosome seems to dive underwater far sooner than necessary and then thrash around below the surface until they reach the hidden entrance which, once there, looks like it could be reached within a couple of feet!

I must say that once they are inside, though, we are treated to some rare imagery, that being the sight of Miss Heatherton with her hair wet and with minimal (for her!) makeup. A soft mist is falling and that, paired with the lighting, gives her a moist, luminescent glow that is quite becoming and which ought to please any one of her heterosexual fans (or all three of them!)

He shows her where he retrieved the locket, left there many years before in a heavy wooden box stuffed in a crevasse, and the couple shares a haunted, erotic moment in which their wet bodies cling to one another as soft mist bears down on them.

I will add that this movie also has the rare distinction of displaying a shirtless Donahue for extended periods of time. Most often in his prior movies, he would wear a shirt or sweater with his swim trunks because, while slim, he wasn't known for his impressive physique. Even here he is not what one might call “cut,” just skinny.

They next head up to Spindrift where Heatherton heads upstairs to put on some dry clothes. Donahue looks around the room where he spies a box that has an old,jade statuette in it that seems to trigger some disturbing memory for him. He thrashes around, knocking over dishes and winding up bent over the table in a position that he might possibly have discovered about the time his agent Henry Willson discovered HIM!

When Heatherton discovers him in this state, he tells her that the statuette is one that he gave to her all those years ago. Again, she is torn about what to believe since the whole thing seems so fantastic and yet otherwise unexplainable.

Meanwhile Sullivan is holding a board meeting for his company and reveals a pretty ruthless attitude. (One of his associates, seen here, is played by Ben Wright who, this same year, played the villainous Nazi sympathizer Herr Zeller in The Sound of Music.)

Coster is rather appalled at Sullivan's cutthroat decision-making and tells him so. Here we find out that Coster does actually possess a backbone and is not quote the milquetoast that Sullivan has believed him to be.

Still bothered by everything going on, Heatherton is back at the old house when her aunt Nolan (in yet another zany get-up, this one as if she's taking in much wampum at an Arizona trading post!) suggests that she take a nice, mind-clearing walk.

Heatherton strolls along the CRAGGY terrain for her relaxing walk and stumbles right into the soggy, seaweed-strewn body of the missing Spindrift caretaker! In her hysteria, she's sure to get a piece of the kelp caught in her hand after its been wound around his bloated, rotting body, so that she can smear it in her face!

(This still photo shows Heatherton's makeup being reapplied after her incredible histrionics down at the shore with the corpse. Amazing the way she had to be picture perfect even when screaming and crying over the discovery of an old, dead body!)

Now, Donahue is in trouble because the caretaker disappeared right about the time he arrived on the scene and began spouting his reincarn-ation spiel. Sullivan has it in for him anyway for interfering with his daughter against his wishes and has him arrested. Heatherton, though, by now, is beginning to have feelings for him and stands by him at the station.

Donahue's sweater in this scene is quite interesting. It's thick, woolly and coming a bit unraveled and he wears it with nothing underneath.

Back on his boat, he undergoes another one of his spastic, convulsions, like something out of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde! He thrashes around all over the cabin and buries his head in the bed before raising up to reveal his hair all smushed forward.

It's entirely possible that this is the first instance in Troy Donahue's film career that his hair was every shown mussed up! He was always photographed with such staggering care that this had to be something of a jolt to his fans. (Of course, what we see here is now a current hairstyle! But back then, this was an unheard of look.)

He goes to see Heatherton, but is threateningly turned away at the door by Sullivan. However, just as it was at the marina, she arrives directly after their exchange and Donahue convinces her that he loves her and gets her to run away with him.

As they head to the marina to board his boat and elope to Mexico, she realizes that she at least owes Coster some sort of goodbye.

She calls Coster from a pay phone and breaks the news to him that she is leaving with Donahue. She asks him to tell her father and aunt the good news!

Coster heads over to the mansion to inform the family and we are greeted with Nolan in one of her more demure (though still considerable) looks, hair-wise. She knows that something is wrong and demands that Coster tell her what has happened.

Once the word is out, she lays into Sullivan, blaming him for driving Heatherton into Donahue's arms with his domineering ways. She reminds him that his controlling attitude also cost him the love of Heatherton's mother.

Naturally, a storm is brewing at sea as our young lovers are sailing for Mexico and it's knocking the boat around like crazy. A frantic Sullivan wants the coast guard to find the boat and bring his daughter back, but there's nothing to be done in that weather.

The following morning, Heatherton is awakened by the nuzzles of a smitten Donahue, though he does ask her to fix coffee and breakfast! He goes out on deck to man the helm while she rummages around for the food. He has a third mental and physical convulsion while she has come upon something troublesome in one of the boat's storage compartments.

That morning, we are treated to one more doozy from Nolan as she descends the stairs (a staircase, by the way, which was featured in many Warner Brothers movies including Auntie Mame, 1958, A Summer Place, 1959, Parrish, 1961, and Rome Adventure, 1962, the last three starring Donahue!)

We're meant to believe that she woke up after an anguished night of fretting over the missing Heatherton and whipped up this insane coiffure?? It's deliciously preposterous. She and Sullivan have one more showdown before coming to an understanding with one another. He gets word that the coast guard has spotted his daughter and bolts out the door with Coster.

Many of the lobby cards and stills for this film feature the climax in them. I don't care to spoil the story any further, but I will say that the finale is pretty protracted and a bit tedious, perhaps because it starts to go the way we've seen so many other movies and TV shows have. It's conventional and something of a let down, though not without some degree of visual interest (a lot of it occurs at a sand plant, which is at least an unusual locale.)

My Blood Runs Cold signaled the end of its stars place in the Hollywood studio firmament. Donahue, unhappy with the roles he'd been given previously and despite this shot at something different, departed Warner Brothers and was subsequently (according to him) blackballed from consideration for decent roles with any other studio. Heatherton, whose only prior films were Twilight of Honor (1963) and Where Love Has Gone (1964), began to focus on her career as a singing and dancing dynamo and didn't return to the cinema screen until Bluebeard in 1972.

Donahue's peak years as a teen idol were 1959 to 1965, after which he struggled to find meaningful employment as an actor and eventually turned to alcohol and drugs (which in turn led to financial ruin and even a period of homelessness!) He did rebound to a degree in the mid-1970s in low-budget films and TV appearances (also enjoying a small role in The Godfather: Part II, 1974, playing a character with his own real name Merle Johnson.)

Having Donahue, whose big blue eyes and swath of blond hair inspired a legion of fans, in a black and white movie is akin to having Shirley Temple minus her curls or Esther Williams without the swimming. While I understand the case for black and white, even understanding that candy colors might have diffused the atmosphere of this movie, I still would love to have seen it in color. This still shows the hue of his aforementioned big, furry sweater.

Donahue died in 2001 of a heart attack at age sixty-five, having navigated a bumpy road after the reasonably short period of success he'd previously enjoyed.

Heatherton also faced rough times after this. While she proved herself to be a captivating singer and an eye-popping dancer on many variety shows, her personal life was fraught with difficulty. In 1969, she married Dallas Cowboy football star Lance Rentzel, but he wound up battling a lot of personal demons that manifested themselves via indecent exposure to underage girls.

Following her 1972 divorce from him, a degree of success on TV, including Serta mattress ads, and the occasional low-budget movie gave way to a string of incidents in the '80s involving monetary disputes, assault and drug possession. Precious little has been heard from her since the early-1990s, though she is still with us today at age seventy.

Sullivan is a member of the Underworld Disaster Movie Club thanks to his appearance in 1974's Earthquake. Though he possessed a certain presence and could be of good use in supporting roles, I've never been able to reconcile that severe face for use as a leading man (such as he was in Queen Bee, 1955, and Forty Guns, 1957, among others.) He enjoyed a busy, fifty-year career in the movies and on TV before passing away in 1994 at the age of eighty-one from respiratory disease.

Coster, who some folks might be surprised to discover was born in England, is best known for plenty of work on daytime soaps including Another World, Santa Barbara and As the World Turns, though he has always remained busy on all sorts of television. Now eighty years of age, he still pops up regularly, including quite a few appearances on the The Bay (2000-present), a soap opera available on the web.

Nolan is another member of the Disaster Movie Club (an organization that exists solely in my head!) for her work in 1978's Avalanche. Already thirty-seven when she made her first film appearance (as no less than Lady Macbeth in the 1948 Orson Welles film, Macbeth, as seen here), she went on to a prolific career before the camera.

In fact, she racked up fifty years worth of on-camera work, ending her career in 1998 with a role in The Horse Whisperer, the same year a stroke took her life at age eighty-six. Four times Emmy nominated, she played everything from dangerous dames to kindly grannies to haggard old biddies. Fans of The Golden Girls might recall her guest spot as Rose's (later to be deemed adoptive) mother in a 1985 episode. She also had one of Tinseltown's most successful marriages, to frequent costar John McIntire, which lasted from 1935 to his death in 1991.

In all honesty, Miss Nolan could sometimes be guilty of overacting, though she was often terrific nonetheless. Here, though, she really delivers a balanced, thoughtful performance, regardless of all the silly cosmetic trappings, and reserves her bigger moments for those times when they are appropriate. I can honestly say that after seeing this movie, I have a newfound affection for her as not only a actress, but as a major league hair hopper!

Speaking of hair, the “Supervising Hair Stylist” for My Blood Runs Cold was Jean Burt Reilly, a Warner Brothers employee from the mid-1940s till the mid-1970s. (She's seen here assisting Petula Clark.) In 1976, she won an Emmy for Eleanor and Franklin, a TV-movie (and was nominated also in 1979 for Ike: The War Years, but lost to Janice Brandow for The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal.) She died in 1981 at age sixty-five, having recently worked on Ordinary People (1980), Raging Bull (1980) and True Confessions (1981.) It's no wonder I was gaga over her work here since she is also the one responsible for the hair in The Towering Inferno (1974)! (God knows no one had better have lit a match next to Nolan's shellacked 'dos in this movie!)

As the hair was my very favorite thing about this movie, I leave you with a series of "highlights."